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Last week my regular computer died. Obviously that sucks, especially since I'm a dunce who never has the sense to make backups of anything. Duuuuuuunce.
Luckily I have a spare computer that my uncle gave me when he got rid of it, but it still hurts to lose all the stuff on it. Especially unfinished stories. Especially the book I've been working on on and off through the past year and some.
This morning I managed to finally get the old computer to stay on long enough to burn my fanfic folder, internet browser favorites, and some other stuff to CD, but I chose to leave the book behind.
This past week, thinking I had to start over from scratch, I've spent all of my writing time with a pen and a notebook scribbling out details about all the major characters, writing a synopsis of the book, working out where exactly I needed to put foreshadowing so important plot elements won't feel like they came out of nowhere or were introduced too close to when they become important, catching places where I need to explain things to make a characters motivation clear (when it's supposed to be) to people who don't just know what's going on in their heads like I do, drawing a map of the land everything happens in so I'll have a clear mental picture of where places are compared to each other and what the landscape between them is, sketching the major characters so my mental image of them is totally firm, and so on and so forth.
Before I only had the plan for it in my head, and I could go months between times when I added a page or two to it. I don't know how many details that I realized I need to add in while writing the synopsis fell through the cracks, but I figured I would be smoothing out the writing when I was done so it'd be fine. But now I think that with all the work I've put into solidifying the story I'm going to end up with a much stronger end result if I let go of what I had of the first draft and start over from the beginning.
I still miss all my stuff, of course, but I'd now like to think that my computer passing on is for the best. Or maybe I'm just being hopelessly optimistic! *g*
Luckily I have a spare computer that my uncle gave me when he got rid of it, but it still hurts to lose all the stuff on it. Especially unfinished stories. Especially the book I've been working on on and off through the past year and some.
This morning I managed to finally get the old computer to stay on long enough to burn my fanfic folder, internet browser favorites, and some other stuff to CD, but I chose to leave the book behind.
This past week, thinking I had to start over from scratch, I've spent all of my writing time with a pen and a notebook scribbling out details about all the major characters, writing a synopsis of the book, working out where exactly I needed to put foreshadowing so important plot elements won't feel like they came out of nowhere or were introduced too close to when they become important, catching places where I need to explain things to make a characters motivation clear (when it's supposed to be) to people who don't just know what's going on in their heads like I do, drawing a map of the land everything happens in so I'll have a clear mental picture of where places are compared to each other and what the landscape between them is, sketching the major characters so my mental image of them is totally firm, and so on and so forth.
Before I only had the plan for it in my head, and I could go months between times when I added a page or two to it. I don't know how many details that I realized I need to add in while writing the synopsis fell through the cracks, but I figured I would be smoothing out the writing when I was done so it'd be fine. But now I think that with all the work I've put into solidifying the story I'm going to end up with a much stronger end result if I let go of what I had of the first draft and start over from the beginning.
I still miss all my stuff, of course, but I'd now like to think that my computer passing on is for the best. Or maybe I'm just being hopelessly optimistic! *g*